Peppermint Bark Brownie Bites

Many of you may think I’m craaaaazy to be sharing a blatant, Christmas-themed recipe a week before Thanksgiving. The rest of you are currently humming along with me to the Maria Carey holiday station on Pandora, and already have your Christmas gift and cookie baking lists in the works.

Yeah, it’s a little early, but even if you file these away for a couple of weeks, you’ll definitely want to bake these indulgent little chocolate bites during the holiday season!

Now, when it comes to brownies, I’m pretty particular. The perfect brownie should be dense and moist and fudgy. It should have a satisfyingly chewy texture, a shiny, crackly top and of course, be packed with rich, intense chocolate flavor.

It’s no small task to create this sort of transcendent brownie from scratch, and all too often you’ll find a sad plate of unfortunately bland, cakey, or greasy interpretations left forgotten on a dessert table. No, thank you.

It begins with really good ingredients, and a double dose of chocolate. I’ve found that using both melted chocolate and cocoa powder provides multiple layers of deep chocolate flavor, which a bit of espresso and vanilla only seek to enhance. Adding brown sugar and an extra egg yolk help to create that ideal, chewy brownie texture I crave, while granulated sugar produces an unmatched crackly top. And the unexpected whole wheat flour? Extra nutrients and fiber, and you wouldn’t even know it.

Around the holidays, I like to gussy up the basic brownie recipe by adding a dash of peppermint extract, cutting the brownies into bite-sized pieces, and dipping them in melted milk or semisweet chocolate followed by a dusting of crushed peppermint candy cane “sprinkles.”

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